CEC Media Release—Donald Trump’s spokesman Sean Spicer confirmed today that the US President is still committed to a Glass-Steagall separation of commercial banks with deposits, from investment banks that speculate. C-Span’s covered Sean Spicer’s answer to Newsmax’s John Gizzi, who asked Spicer if Trump would work with Senator Bernie Sanders on restoring Glass-Steagall, and if Trump remained committed to restoring it. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Si-HYOLrEF4) London’s Financial Times reported that Spicer’s confirmation of Trump’s support for Glass-Steagall spooked the banks on Wall Street: “Bank stocks slip as White House confirms intent to revisit Glass-Steagall”. “Financials don’t seem too happy to hear that bringing back Glass-Steagall is still on President Donald Trump’s policy to-do list”, FT reported. “In response to a question on Thursday about whether Mr Trump remains committed to a campaign promise to revisit the Great Depression era law—which prohibited commercial deposit-holding banks from engaging in riskier investment banking activities—White House press secretary Sean Spicer said that he was. “US bank shares trimmed their advance on the back of Mr Spicer’s answer. The S&P 500 banks index, which tracks the largest American lenders, cut its gain to 0.5 per cent from 0.8 per cent.” FT’s rush to cover this development underscores how the City of London is equally sensitive to any discussion about Glass-Steagall, which would put an end to Too-Big-To-Fail banks using the deposits of their customers to underwrite their derivatives gambling bets, which add up to hundreds of trillions of dollars and pounds. Glass-Steagall for Australia Glass-Steagall equally scares Australia’s banks, and the politicians that are in their pockets. Australia’s Big Four TBTF banks are rapidly becoming the most derivatives-addicted banks in the world. Derivatives are bets on interest rates, currency exchange rates, and financial markets, and complex combinations thereof. They are often fraudulent and designed to get around regulations intended to stop financial institutions from taking risks that would put their customers in danger of losing their investments. The exposure of Australia’s banks, especially the Big Four, to these risky and toxic financial bets is skyrocketing by trillions of dollars per year. Since the 2008 financial crisis Australian bank derivatives has increased by more than 160 per cent, from $14 trillion to $36 trillion. (http://cecaust.com.au/images/20170310-TotalDerivativesGrowth-1989to2016.jpg) Last year NAB, the biggest derivatives gambler, suddenly stopped disclosing its true derivatives position. CBA started hiding its true derivatives exposure in 2012. The Big Four banks hold around 80 per cent of the deposits of Australians. It is a scandal that APRA and the government allow the banks to hide their most risky activity in this way. (http://cecaust.com.au/images/20170310-BankDerivativesinBig%20FourComparison.jpg)